this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
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Science Memes

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submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Not sure why this triggered a snarky response unless Ted is just waving a monkey puppet for internet points. Talking normally to kids is not rocket science, and it's not stereotypical yuppies desperate to get their gifted darlings into AP class. It's very simple - little kids can handle normal speech just fine, so why use baby talk?

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 month ago (3 children)

It really depends on the kid and the complexity of the message. Young kids are still learning the intricacies of the language and building a vocabulary. Not talking down to them helps build those skills up. But at the end of the day, if the message is not getting across, it's the fault of the communicator.

Plus it's an annoying flex to say "see how amazing my kid is? It's all because of me!" Some kids just pick up language easier, some kids sleep all the way through the night earlier, some kids toilet train easier, etc. Usually it's better for parents to quietly take the little victory rather than treat it as a reflection of their amazing parenting skills.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Exactly, there's a difference between baby talk and using age reasonable vocabulary.

You don't need to ask a 3 year old why they are being disobedient. But it's perfectly reasonable to ask why they "aren't doing what you asked them to do".

Those are all different from why u no lissen bebe

[–] Rekorse 2 points 1 month ago

Baby talk is garbage for communicating but it can be very funny for the baby and the parent.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

regardless of a child's inherent language skills I would argue that it's a detriment to baby talk to them. surely the earlier they receive regular communication the sooner they are going to learn it.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure, it's not that simple.

For one, you might not have much to chat about with your baby, so doing baby talk might actually get in more language training.

But then baby talk is also very emotionally charged. So, it might help with emotional development, or simply make the baby pay attention for longer and therefore actually help the language development.

Well, and then it also still depends on the baby. For example, this research suggests that babies with autism react differently to baby talk: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/news/science-news/2022/toddlers-responses-to-baby-talk-linked-to-social-cognitive-language-abilities

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

For one, you might not have much to chat about with your baby, so doing baby talk might actually get in more language training.

In a good environment babies should be exposed to plenty of language. There's tribal societies which don't talk to their kids until they start to talk themselves and those kids turn out fine by all metrics researchers could throw at them. What they do do is take them with them everywhere.

You do not need to capture a baby's attention for them to sponge up information. They do pretty much nothing else no matter what you do.

What has been shown to be beneficial is to give them the opportunity to talk to their caregivers earlier, figures that language capability develops faster than the capability to make complex sounds, it's the whole point behind baby sign: So they can tell you that no they aren't hungry they want their teddy. Doesn't benefit language skills, it does reduce frustration (you might figure), bonds to their caregiver, and benefits both party's emotional states.

[–] Rekorse 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Thats all well thought out and such but anyone with more than one kid will tell you that nature has a huge hand in it. You could treat the children the same and they can learn wildly different rates and have diverging interests.

This idea the parents take most of the responsibility for the achievements of their children is absurd. Its just as absurd as a head coach being praised for a victory in sports.

You don't praise the guard rails in bumper bowling for the score at the end, thats the bowler. The guard rails just kept some of the worst outcomes from happening.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

This idea the parents take most of the responsibility for the achievements of their children is absurd.

There's also the flip-side of that attitude. It sure must feel nice for parents to be able to congratulate themselves when their kid excels, but what about when their kid has a disability or a developmental impairment? Who is responsible then?

It's easy to be a parent when your kid acts and responds the way you want them to. Parents of neurodivergent kids can go above and beyond for their children, yet despite that they'll still be given dirty looks and treated like pariahs when their overstimulated child has a public meltdown.

Kids aren't raw lumps of clay that parents can mold to perfect shape. The best any parent can do is guide them toward success.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Coaches do have quite a large impact on teams, they're the ones who study the opponent, formulate strategies, and then translate that into a training regimen.

In so far as being a kid is playing sportsball the coach is primarily the genome, then with some distance culture (takes a village and everything), and then the parents. You can praise a parent for having the wherewithal to introduce their kid to spaced repetition software, you can't praise them for the kid feeling inclined to learn six languages before the age of 14 that was all the genome spotting a niche, adapting a suitable individual to serve a role by making it excited.

[–] Rekorse 1 points 1 month ago

Yeah I don't mean to imply that coaches or parents have no affect, just that they are commonly overstated.

Unless you happen to be the coach of my cities football (us) team, then that coach is a psycho and is single handedly responsible for losing last playoffs.

I guess thats sort of like a bad parent who tries to force stuff on their kids.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

Can't expect nerds to have the social intelligence to understand that.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Because there's a ton of research that we adapted to do it for good reasons:

Infants between 6 and 8 months of age displayed a robust and distinct preference for speech with resonances specifying a vocal tract that is similar in size and length to their own. This finding, together with data indicating that this preference is not present in younger infants and appears to increase with age, suggests that nascent knowledge of the motor schema of the vocal tract may play a role in shaping this perceptual bias, lending support to current models of speech development.

Stanford psychologist Michael Frank and collaborators conducted the largest ever experimental study of baby talk and found that infants respond better to baby talk versus normal adult chatter.

TL;DR: Top parents are actually harming their kids' developmental process by being snobs about it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

You can also just talk normally to your kids without being a snob about anything.